


carved my love through blood and pain

by lovetincture



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Blood and Gore, Body Modification, Fluff, M/M, Murder Husbands, Soulmate-Identifying Marks
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-03
Updated: 2019-09-03
Packaged: 2020-10-06 05:28:37
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,459
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20501657
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lovetincture/pseuds/lovetincture
Summary: “Would your soulmate do this for you, Will?”“No,” Will breathes. “No one but you.”Will and Hannibal are not soulmates. The concept of soulmates can go fuck itself, as far as either of them are concerned. They're something better. Theychoseeach other, above all others.





	carved my love through blood and pain

**Author's Note:**

> This is a prompt fill for the Hannigram Kinkmeme, courtesy of [exarite](https://archiveofourown.org/users/exarite). I'll post the prompt at the end because I don't quite want to give the fic away upfront. 😉

Will meets his soulmate when he’s thirty-nine.

Like most people, she’d registered with a soulmate-matching agency, and all it takes is Will snapping a photo of the mark on his own arm and uploading it to the website. The algorithm does the rest, a marvel of neural networks and a vast database. His phone pings with a hit in less than a minute.

“Jesus, technology’s gotten amazing,” Will says. “We never had anything like this when I was a kid.”

Hannibal snakes his arms around Will’s shoulders and presses a kiss to his temple. “Would you have used it even if they had?”

Will turns his head to catch Hannibal’s lips. They kiss in a slick, messy slide of tongues, deep and dirty. “Probably not,” he admits when he pulls back.

Hannibal chases his mouth and earns a nip to his lower lip for his trouble. It’s a terrible deterrent, and they both know it. Hannibal growls at the first press of Will’s teeth and digs his fingers into Will’s shoulders. At this rate they’ll end up in bed again. Or on the couch, over the table, beside the kitchen counter while the dogs all watch.

“Stop it,” Will says, pushing him away. He doesn’t sound the slightest bit convincing. “At this rate, I’ll never find her.”

“Does it matter?” Hannibal purrs in his ear.

“Yeah,” Will says. “It does.”

They’ve had this conversation before. It might not be important to Hannibal, but it is to Will. He gets up and walks to the window, taking his phone with him, putting enough distance between himself and Hannibal that he won’t be distracted by grasping hands again.

He runs a hand through his hair and scrolls through the bio.

Will’s soulmate is a doctor. A pretty woman with a kind smile and laughing eyes who loves dogs just as much as he does. She has a face that’s easy to love, and Will can’t help smiling at the picture of her surrounded by a litter of squirming puppies.

He taps out a message that starts, “Hey! I’m so glad to finally meet you” and goes from there.

* * *

“I’ve got an address!” Will calls from the couch. He holds his phone aloft like a prize catch. They’ve been texting for weeks now.

“Congratulations,” Hannibal says. He taps Will’s feet. “Shoes off the sofa.”

Will grumbles but moves his legs aside so Hannibal can sit.

“Are you sure you want to do this?” Hannibal asks. He rests a hand on Will’s thigh. There’s hardly a moment when the two of them aren’t touching if they’re within arm’s reach. They might as well be conjoined. “You don’t have to. We can continue on as we have been.”

“Of course,” Will says, distracted by his phone. He’s lucky—she lives within driving distance. Some people’s soulmates live on the other side of the world, speak a completely different language. She’s right across town. He’s already looking up directions to her house.

* * *

She doesn’t look like the rest of the Ripper’s kills when he's done. Not that the Ripper’s kills have looked the same since he took up with Will Graham, but there’s been a sort of continuity, a thread of whimsy that they both delight in for different reasons. Hannibal loves making art. Will just loves making a mess, but the theatrics make Hannibal happy, and that makes Will happy. A perfect, closed circuit of love and bloody devotion.

This one isn’t like that. There’s no theater here. Will wouldn’t allow it.

“They’ll say she died peacefully in her sleep,” Hannibal murmurs.

She died at the dining table, but they’d carried her upstairs and put her in bed.

“It’s unlike you not to make a scene.” Hannibal paints his hand over Will’s cheek, and he leans into it.

“She won’t make the papers. There’ll be no investigation. No fame, no infamy. No one will know she lived and died. I’ve erased her completely.” He threads his fingers through Hannibal’s. “For you.”

_ “Mano meile.” _

Hannibal kisses him, utterly touched.

They take the poisoned wine and wipe their fingerprints off everything when they leave.

* * *

“What about yours?” Will asks. 

It’s early in the morning, so early that they’re up before the sun, but Will is tense beside him. He blinks the sleep from his eyes and rises up onto an elbow to study his beloved’s face in the dim light.

Hannibal doesn’t see the point of fretting. God loves to play his jokes. That doesn’t mean they need to play along.

“Does it bother you so?” he asks, taking one of Will’s wrists in hand to kiss his knuckles. They’re scabbed over from a fight and just tender enough to draw forth a shiver when Hannibal scrapes his teeth over the ridges of bone.

“Yes,” Will hisses. “You belong to me. I don’t like the thought of anyone walking around with a claim on you.”

Hannibal hums something wordless and light. He nips his way up Will’s arm, then lower, raining feather-light kisses down Will’s belly, along the dearly loved smattering of hair that smells of sweat and musk and his darling.

Hannibal shrugs one shoulder and licks a long wet stripe up Will’s cock. Will’s hands are fisted in the bedsheets, eyes dark and moody.

“People are supposed to be with their soulmates. People aren’t supposed to kill and eat their fellow man. What does it matter? We’ll do what we always have—whatever we like,” Hannibal says.

Any response Will might have had is lost in a strangled moan as Hannibal swallows him whole. He threads his fingers through Hannibal’s hair and pushes his head down until he chokes.

Hannibal doesn’t answer his question until much later, when they’ve both gotten their breath back.

“He’s dead,” Hannibal says. “My soulmate. He died as a child, before we ever met.”

Will is quiet in his arms. “I’m sorry,” he says at last.

Hannibal’s lips quirk up in a smile. “Are you sorry you didn’t get to kill him?”

“Yes.”

Hannibal holds him tight. “That’s my boy.”

* * *

They never do get married. By the time it occurs to either of them to want it, it’s far too late. They’ve been found out, and they’re wanted internationally.

Hannibal finds a way to make it up to Will anyway.

Will comes home to find a surgical tray waiting on the dining table. There’s a scalpel, a pair of forceps, and a hypodermic needle laid out in perfect parallel, with gauze stacked neatly to the side. The entire room reeks of bleach.

“Hannibal?”

“In the kitchen,” Hannibal calls. His sleeves are rolled up to his elbows, and he’s pulling a roast from the oven. “My apologies for shouting. I had my hands full.”

Will shrugs. “My dad and I used to holler at each other across the house all day. It’s fine.” He looks around and sees the kitchen for the first time. There are pots and pans on every available burner and a salad waiting on the counter. He’s sure he’d find something ridiculous in the fridge for dessert if he opened it.

“I haven’t seen you cook a spread like this in ages. Please tell me you didn’t invite the neighbors again. I can’t stand Mrs. Jacobs. She gets handsy.”

He’s mostly joking, and Hannibal can tell. He smiles and brushes past Will, closer than strictly necessary in a kitchen this big.

“Just you and I tonight,” Hannibal says. He hands Will a large serving platter. “Will you take this to the table, please?”

Hannibal, as it turns out, had cooked even more food than Will had assumed on first glance. The dinner is exquisite, and Will is distracted.

“You can ask, you know,” Hannibal says.

Will’s eyes gravitate back toward the surgical tray as if drawn by magnets. He’d successfully avoided looking all the way through to dessert. He’s dreadfully curious. A dozen possible scenarios flit through his head, some of them pleasant, all of them bloody.

“I won’t ruin the surprise if you don’t,” Will says. It’s a lie and it isn’t. He takes a deep drink of his wine, nearly draining the refilled cup testing a theory.

“If you drink too much, you’ll bleed.”

Will raises his eyebrows and takes another pointed sip of his wine. “Do you mind?”

Hannibal’s smile is full of sharp teeth as he fills Will’s glass again. “Not at all.”

* * *

“So what is this?” Will asks finally, once all the dishes have been cleared and everything is put away.

They’re nursing glasses of scotch, and Hannibal bids Will sit. He pulls up a dining chair and maneuvers it so they’re sitting knee to knee, close enough to smell the wine on each other’s breath. Close enough to share body heat.

Hannibal taps one of Will’s arms. “May I?” he asks.

Will nods, holding his arm out. Hannibal unbuttons the cuff of Will’s shirt, humming as he works it up, rolling the sleeve to expose the flushed skin below. Hannibal smooths his hand over Will’s soulmark, covering the weeping willow there with his hand, obscuring it from view.

“I know how this bothers you,” Hannibal says. He rolls up his own sleeve and presses his own soulmark to Will’s. It’s a touching gesture. “Let me fix it.”

Will’s breath catches in his throat when he realizes what Hannibal means, and he starts to pull away. “Hannibal, you don’t have to do that. It’s fine.”

Hannibal ignores him and picks up the scalpel. He tears open an alcohol swab and wipes it over Will’s arm before setting the blade at the edge of the willow tree. Its leaves seem to shiver and sway over Will’s trembling skin.

“Would your soulmate do this for you, Will?”

“No,” Will breathes. “No one but you.”

“Good,” Hannibal says. “Take a deep breath.”

Will does, but it’s punched out of him at the feel of Hannibal’s knife sliding below his skin. He slips it in at an angle so he can peel the flesh from muscle. Will grits his teeth, wishing he’d had another glass of whiskey. Any alcohol in his system has given way to the bright-burning pain dancing along his synapses.

He hisses when Hannibal stops to wipe away the blood, the better to see what he’s doing.

“How does it feel?” Hannibal asks.

“Like you’re cutting a chunk out of my arm,” Will grits. He smiles when the weak joke earns a chuckle from Hannibal.

“It’s almost over, _ mano meile.” _

Will nods. He could close his eyes, wade into the stream in his mind and pass the time there until Hannibal’s done, but he doesn’t want to miss a second of this.

True to his word, Hannibal is painstaking but quick. He finishes and wipes away the blood one last time before binding Will’s arm tight with gauze. He ties it off and tucks the edges under.

“Keep pressure on that for a moment,” he says.

Will does as he’s told, grunting as he clamps numb fingers around the open wound, ignoring the warm wetness seeping through the gauze. It’s still bleeding freely and probably will for some time. He feels vaguely nauseous, the wine and liquor and heavy meal sitting poorly with the pain, but it passes.

Hannibal brings him a glass of water and a painkiller and sits with him until both do their work.

“Better?” He asks.

Will nods. Hannibal is holding the scalpel extended to him, handle first.

“I don’t know how to do this without hurting you,” Will says. He realizes it’s ridiculous even as he says it, considering he’s planning to flay the skin from Hannibal’s arm. He knows exactly how much it will hurt, but he also trusts Hannibal to know what he means.

“Pain is nothing to be afraid of,” Hannibal says. He touches Will’s face with a hand still streaked with his own blood. “I would endure this and more for you, my love.”

Will swallows. Nods. Takes the knife Hannibal offers and takes a deep breath. “So walk me through it.”

“Clean the site first. Make sure to saturate it with alcohol.”

Will tears open a new alcohol swab and does as he’s told. The dining room is quiet while they wait for the alcohol to dry, but it’s anything but awkward. The silence has a comforting weight to it. It’s intimate. Personal. Will looks at Hannibal’s arm, and he wants to touch, wants to reach out and trace the familiar shape of Hannibal’s soulmark. He doesn’t want to contaminate the skin, so he settles for running his eyes over it instead, lingering over every curve and angle, every variation of color.

“I’ll miss this, I think,” Will says. “I’ve hated seeing it on you, but it’s part of you all the same. I’ve grown attached.”

“You’ll make a new mark, and then that will be part of me too.”

“My own mark,” Will agrees. He takes one last look before putting it out of his mind. “What now?”

“You watched me. Do as I did. Keep a steady, even pressure, parting the skin from the fat below. Angle the blade and keep the cut shallow.”

Will doesn’t ask if he’s ready, doesn’t give himself time to change his mind. He just takes the knife and slips it in.

He works slower than Hannibal, taking his time to make sure he doesn’t cut too deep. He’s worried about hitting an artery, worried about hurting Hannibal, but when he looks up at Hannibal’s face, he looks positively transcendent. His lips are parted and his cheeks are flushed, and it’s possible Will has never loved Hannibal more than he does in this moment.

Hannibal doesn’t flinch when Will mops up his work with a towel that’s rapidly becoming a deep, wet red. At last it’s finished, and Hannibal’s discarded soulmark joins Will’s in the surgical tray. They sit together, two vivid flaps of skin one on top of the other, and Will thinks he’s never seen something so beautiful.

Hannibal’s hand at his wrist pulls him out of his reverie, and Will comes back to himself. To the present and this man beside him. He cleans and binds Hannibal’s wound before he can lose too much blood.

They’ll clean the gore off their table, eventually. They’ll take another round of painkillers and move gingerly in the morning. Will will swear a blue streak when he knocks his arm against the dresser, and showers will be an awkward affair for weeks.

But for now, he threads his fingers through Hannibal’s and smiles at the answering pressure when Hannibal squeezes his hand.

“We match now,” Will says.

“We always have,” Hannibal replies.

He kisses the grin from Will’s mouth and leaves bloody handprints on his shirt.

**Author's Note:**

> _Prompt: Will and Hannibal are *not* soulmates. They cut out the portion of the skin where their soulmarks are, eat it, then carve their names onto each other as their vows._  
  
I think I followed the spirit of the prompt, if not the letter. I didn't quite hit all the beats, but I was too happy with the end result to change it.
> 
> As always, you can find me screaming about Hannibal on [Twitter](http://twitter.com/lovetincture). You can also check out my [original work](http://hopezane.com), if you're so inclined! 💙


End file.
